Musa Verticordia :: :: University of Virginia Library

Deep in the forest's moist malarious gloom,
Dungeoned in terror of the world, they lie,
Knights of the Grail; as in a sick man's room,
The air is faint with languid agony.

There is no man in all their spectral host,
There is no woman in old Klingsor's crew;
Sir Parsifal is tempted by a ghost,
Half ghost himself; since Love he never knew.

This is the Vale of Lust; the foul surmise
Of vowed virginity, imagining
That in the hell of Klingsor's garden lies
The heaven of Love. But yet the birds that sing

High in the foliage,—though I cannot hear
Their voice, for chimes and chantings—like the flowers,
Fulfil each other's beauty, without fear
Of retribution for their nuptial hours.

2.

Had you no message, Master, but this tale,
The little lamp that lit the Middle Age,—
The lie that lovers cannot win the Grail,
And Love can prove no godly parentage?

Could tawdry gardens such as Klingsor's draw
Into their clumsy toils a man made wise
By one o'er-mastering passion? 'Tis the law
Of Love alone that leads to Paradise.

Of Love; not pleasure; but that poignant bliss,
The joy of union, so akin to pain;
The sense of mutual mingling; not the kiss
Of folly, vapid, volatile, and vain.

On such false kisses trembling mystics pore;
Their mind is ravished of its maidenhead;
Possessed by Kundry, ever more and more
Damned by the dream of their desire and dread.

3.

I'll read the riddle, if you will;
Not as the Churches wish it read,

Not as they count the good and ill,
Or separate the quick and dead;

But by the oneness of the whole
Creation:—Love may be the Spear,
But if it pierce a morbid soul,
Pushed into folly by the fear

Of Love itself, the wound is Lust;
The worst corruption of the best;
Then venom gathers to the thrust
Whose wholesome wounding once was blest.

Yet may the hurt of Lust be healed,
If Love can once again be won;
The fount of pain by passion sealed,
The flame extinguished by the sun.

II. Die Meistersinger

1.

Released from that miasmic spell
And commune with sad souls, half dead,
With him who cobbled and sang as well
High on the hills of life we tread.

Well met, Hans Sachs! We grasp your hand,
We look you full in the face and feel
That men who in the sunshine stand
Need never in the darkness kneel.

Set in the brilliance and the breeze,
Their minds are emptied of the rust

Of mildew, lichens of disease,
And all the dragons of the dust.

Wisely to work and wisely sing,
To love as one who deems it wrong
No more than any woodland thing
Mated in May, makes life a song.

2.

What vigorous, virile strains are these!
What Maenad and yet measured mirth!
So sound the billows and the breeze
That bring salt savour to the Earth.

Now troop away those phantoms pale,
Pretenders of monastic days,
For Nürnberg drowns their cloistered wail
With the large din of human ways.

Now is Beckmesser's serenade
By Hans Sachs' hammer sorely smit,
For here they follow love and trade
And worship God with work and wit.

Harmonious life! Imagined sin
Mars not its large concerted tone,
But every heart may hope to win
A mode and music of its own.

3.

The Guilds of Nürnberg march along,
The banners wave, the trumpets blow,
The women are fair, the men are strong,
To love and labour well they know.

And now arrive the reverend sirs
Who must adjudge the minstrel crown

To him who trolls the noblest verse,
To win the Beauty of the Town.

Beckmesser strums on silly strings
The jangling ballad's iterate note;
Derided soon: but Walter sings
The love that none can learn by rote.

Thus, Master of the wizard brain,
Of Love and Life you wove the spell;
Only the greatest sing that strain;
The least can sing of Heaven and Hell!